This
article originally appeared in Advocate, a newsletter of the National
Education Association. It is reprinted here with the kind permission
of the author. The article was originally addressed to college and university
professors, but it is of equal value to students. An educational system increasingly
driven by technological imperatives, and ever more closely linked to meeting
the needs of the corporate market-place in the information age, demands
that we ask, debate, and answer a critical question about our mission:
What is education for?

The peril in leaving this question
unaddressed lies, I fear, not so much in the danger to our faculty jobs
as we have known them, but to the outcome of our lifelong endeavors.

The danger lies in the restructuring
of higher education itself that accompanies the trumpeting of new technologies.
For the virtual classroom accentuates the focus on the ability of higher
education institutions to produce graduates that claim the best jobs in
the information economy.

Education driven by the imperative
to provide employees for the Information Age will, I fear, find scant place
for philosophy, ethics, art, or courses that provocatively delve into amyriad
of social issues.

If higher education is judged
on its ability to produce the workers corporations need at the turn of
the century, who will produce students who dare to ask hard questions about
the merits of mass consumption, global inequities, the skeletons in our
historical closet such as genocide against native Americans, or to ponder
whether each and every technology we are capable of developing should,
indeed, be created?

I believe that education does
not mean catering to a corporate agenda or running universities like businesses.
It is not our job to please the stockholders, meet the bottom line, or
keep the customer happy.

Education, to me, means graduating
students who will contribute in a myriad of ways to creating a global society
that is more just, equitable, and sustainable than ever before. Global
citizens need a firm grounding in world history, geopolitics, cultural
diversity, and environmental and social change. Global citizenship demands
strong analytical skills, the ability to learn and communicate ideas, and
critical thinking skills.

It is imperative that we debate
this issue now, for the answer to the question, "What is education for?
"underlies all the challenges we face as we enter the 21st century.